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osteo-metallurgy is the new black, right?
sprawled on my back, i watch through the slivers of semi-closed blinds as the first fingers of dawn snake across an upside down sky. normally, the sleepless begrudge a new day's arrival: it serves notice to hours forever lost in the futility of the exercise, and a grim reminder that yet another day, as unforgiving as the last, is now upon you.
this morning, however, i am not sure what to feel.
it seems to me that is always like this, that days such as these arrive. quiet mornings nuanced only by a heightened self awareness.
this dawn: orange skies, gray clouds. just like yesterday, just like tomorrow. in this way, it drips of syrupy literary banality. yet, even as i lie here, bored with another postcard perfect sunrise, i consider how the events of today have the potential to alter all following days that i might know.
this moment, these breaths, are how i will always remember my last dawn as a fully organic; a hazy morning spent speculating what it would've been like in iceland.
today, i become the machine. i wish i would have gone to reykjavik instead.
(2) comments
scam #102 - good times behind enemy lines
despite yesterday's success, i almost chickened out.
deep into my lunch hour, far corner of the carpark, engine idling: there's an usually good cover of ceremony on the radio, and i'm staring at the faceless shuffle trying to remember the artist. i'm stalling. no, i'm pacing. i'm in a shadow.
18 stories of hospital, block the sun, tower overhead. i can do this. pull the key, open door, straighten shirt. i can do this.
..........
in the lobby of the main building, it's open, yet crowded. 15 feet to the right, a corridor of elevators, top button already glowing. just as i reach it, the doors glide open, and the car is half full. a few squeeze past me, step inside. hesitating again, i wave them on.
the doors close, the button goes dark. i can do this. as i reach forward to push it again, i speculate on the number of sicko, germ-infected people have pressed this in the last hour; returning my hand to my side, i wipe it discretely on my pants. ewwww.
flicker. flicker. a power surge, a brown-out, it doesn't last but a second.
now, resonating in the hollowness before me, i can hear alarms. each tone shift reflects the respective car's relative distance from my floor; a chaotic kaleidoscope of tinny metallic noise as i stare at my own reflection in polished brass doors. smiling.
that, was close.
i turn on my heel, head for the stairs. up up up. with even landings, the alarms grow louder, only to fade again in the odds. at floor 10, i spill out into a wide open hallway, and fall in step behind some doctors walking just a few feet in front of me. dumb luck!
there are signs above, and on the walls. radiology: C wing. we continue straight ahead. now to the left. i slow as one member of the group waves his badge over the wall mounted reader, then doubletime to catch the opaque glass door, just before it latches. 20 feet beyond, the image library desk.
smiling, (beaming), i hand the receptionist a carefully prepared 3x5 index card containing my name, my hospital ID, and my birthdate: "the attendent last night was to set aside some image media for this patient?"
she takes the card, scans it briefly, looks up at me, smiles. "sure, just one second." shuffling through a poster-tray filebox mounted to the wall behind her desk, she selects a small manilla envelope and turns to hand it to me. "we also included hard copy reports of the physician's image evaluations for the post-op review on april 19."
"excellent, those will be very helpful. thank you."
i'm already half way out. through the door, to the stairs. the alarms have stopped now, but i'm not taking any chances.
...........
[ some time later ]
i must admit, it took a little work to find a utility which could read files in DICOM image format, but once opened, it was pretty straightforward to convert them to another web ready format. [ wanna see? ]
(3) comments
scam #101 - jack vs. the medical bureaucracy
it has not taken long to discover that the only thing that is more frustrating than the recovery time of this injury, is the absolute futility of ever reaching a live medical professional to ask about it.
...be it prescriptions, appointments, or god forbid, pre-surgical medical questions solicited of a doctor: each manic, information-hungry, stab into the bureaucracy of the hospital system results in a recursive loop of phone menus offering a suite of options that don't match the request. ultimately, most of these questions end up in a generic phone box, and lie dormant for days, sometimes weeks, until (or if) a response is made.
absolute fucking insanity. we are not calling an erosion control hotline. we are calling a medical office. the requested information is necessary, pertinent, and above all things, time-sensitive.
it is 9:16 a.m, and i am stalled on yet another hold queue—involuntarily tapping my foot to a madonna song considered so risque as to be banned from radio only a decade ago—and i'm just waiting for the two-tone-beep which indicates i have been timed-out, and unceremoniously dumped into a dusty voice mailbox. tapping my foot, looking at my system clock, and just counding the seconds; "there has got to be another way."
ctrl-t, ctrl-l, www.google.com, [enter]
30 minutes later, i've found a free utility for spoofing a CLID (Caller ID), and the and the exit key sequence necessary to drop out of the proprietary(1) voice menu system employed by their office.
requisite tools in place, i move on to collect environmental data: a few focused search strings on the health system's website, i've found the intended internal department name of my query, the location of their office, and what seems like a unsuspicious call center #.
...and now, now i'm ready...
...........
i enter the code; three clicks, in rapid succession. probably call routing switches... and it's ringing.
sure enough, sporting my new in-system ID, the internal operator doesn't even blink when i ask to be forwarded to the "medical records library." two rings later—fuck me—a human answers the phone...
"yes, i'd like to request a copy of patient XXXX's x-rays, as documented on the dates D1, D2, and D3.""would you like film duplicates, or is digital media all right?"
"digital is acceptable. probably save you some trouble too."
"yes, they sure do. we can have those ready for you in an hour, sir. would you like to mail them to your department, or..."
crap. i didn't think about this. intercepting mail is illegal, and i'm not out to break the law. "i'd rather finish this patient report tonite: may i pick them up in person? you're on the 10th floor, correct?"
"yes sir."
"brilliant. i'll be by this afternoon. do i ask for you by name, or?"
"they will be waiting for you at the front desk. you will need to tell them the patient name and ID."
"execellent. thanks so much for your time."
[ click ]
..........
an hour! now, that's what i call service.
time for phase 2: the social hack. look the part, acquire the media. a friend suggested that i don a lab coat, but i think that would be too much, too obvious... i'm thinking a slightly ruffled blue button down oxford, some chinos, and maybe that old beeper will be just about right.
use $STD_LIB/eddie_haskel; sweet_talk ();
[1] (this pearl of information came up during an informal conversation with a chatty receptionst during my last office visit: we were innocently commiserating about flakey corporate phone systems, and she mentioned their recent roll-out.)
today, i discover that many of the commercial vendors of these systems provide readily available documentation for deploying and testing the call routing software. amazing what happens when you rtfm. )
(3) comments
fear is the path to the dark side
perhaps a tragic indictment of my own feigned optimism... but one must consider the possible perk(s) of scheduling a somewhat invasive surgery on may 23rd in lieu of the 13th.
the possibility of personal expiration—however remote—due to complications of the procedure is somewhat more acceptable so long as it were to happen after may 19th.
i mean, can one define a more fundamental case of unfinished business...?
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freaky friday
today, after weaks of teeth-grinding anticipation, i finally received the scheduling call from the hospital's surgical department, regarding the target date for installation of my new "functional upgrades."
a distant, well enunciated, though slightly accented (slavic) voice on line suggests that 5/23 is the earliest date they can fit me in:
"though, i believe we maybe have cancellation on 13th may. would you be interested in that, if available?"
sure. please. anytime. as soon as possible. call me. i want to get it over with. i am desperately ready. to. move. on.
so, i hang up, open my calendar to pencil it in... 5/13. friday. friday the thirteenth. no wonder they think they'll have a damn cancelation. (rolls eyes)
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